Voxbone API offers real-time delivery of mobile and toll-free numbers from over 50 countries. Google makes the cost of cloud storage nearly free. Plus: the Australian Bureau of Labor Stats stealth API, and Acquia scales API calls for a major train operator.

Voxbone API Speeds Service Activation, CDR Retrieval

The Voxbone API delivers mobile and toll-free phone numbers from over 50 countries in real time. The API is used by cloud communication providers and telecom API providers to tie in numbers and SIP trunks with their service. Voxbone's new update features faster activation of services, increased security, and call data record (CDR) retrieval.

“Voxbone launched the first version of its API in 2007, making us the first ‘telecom API.’ This API has been one of the attributes that set us apart from traditional telcos,” said Itay Rosenfeld, CEO of Voxbone. “Given its importance to our business, we invested significant resources to build this new API using a powerful development framework, emphasizing our commitment to remain the telecommunication industry’s point of reference in this area. Besides delivering new features, this new version enables us to bring future services to the market faster.”

This is the third version of the update since the initial release in 2007, and is built on a new development framework. Having just graduated from a 3 month beta phase, the API and documentation can be found here.

Cloud Storage Costs Falling to Earth With New Google Offer

In cloud services, the money is where the data is, not in monetizing the storage. That's the view of Rajesh Abhyankar, CEO of MediaAgility, a firm working with Google. As he told the Wall Street Journal, “Storage is a race to the bottom on pricing. The money will be in software and services that sit and run on top of these companies’ cloud platforms.” But will Google succeed in its goal of catching up with Amazon's AWS and getting companies to move over to its platform based on price? That seems unlikely--especially when battling Amazon over price, which fiercely competes on that metric on every product it offers.

For the moment, though, Google has the advantage. Through its partner startup Panzura, it is offering two terabytes of free storage for a year. Amazon's equivalent as of this writing would be $240 for the same amount of storage. Either plan vastly outdoes other competitors such as Dropbox, whose free offerings are usually measured in gigabytes, not terabytes.

While it's unclear how this will play out, the downward spiral is likely to last, benefiting enterprises and consumers. Ever greater amounts of free storage may come to have vast implications, just as free search has already transformed the world. Good news for developers and those offering data through APIs.